Being Smart
About Intelligent Design
David Banach
Department of Philosophy
St. Anselm College
What is Intelligent Design?
Agreements with Evolution
Accepts Geological Time scale for
age of Earth.
Accepts common descent of all
organisms on Earth.
Accepts the importance of natural
selection driven evolution in microevolution and the evolution of many,
if not most species
Disagreements with Evolution
Natural selection working upon
random variation cannot produce
some complex features of living
organisms.
Some type of Intelligence (natural or
non-natural)is the source of some
features of living organisms.
Central Works and Figures
Behe, Michael J. Darwin's Black Box.
Simon & Schuster 1996
 Dembski, William. Intelligent Design:
The Bridge Between Science and
Theology. InterVarsity Press, 1999.
 William S. Harris and John H. Calvert.
“Intelligent Design: The Scientific
Alternative to Evolution” (National
Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Autumn
2003) .

Intelligent Design in the News
Kansas:
Discovery Institute
1999 and 2005 State Science Standards
 Pennsylvania:
Thomas More Law Center
Discovery Institute.
Pandas and People. Edited Creationist
text.
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The Wedge
The 1998 manifesto of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture
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Governing Goals
To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and
political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that
nature and human beings are created by God.
Five Year Goals
To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences
and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other
than natural science.
To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal
responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.
Twenty Year Goals
To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular
biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural
sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the
humanities; to see its influence in the fine arts.
To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political
life.
Lesson 1
Stick to the Science and not the Politics.
 Much of the debate on ID is a reflection of
the larger Postmodern debate about the
roles of reason and power in determining
the True and the Good.
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Is it Science?
Is it Scientific Discourse?
YES. It makes statements of fact and
reason that can be verified or falsified.
 Is it a Scientific Theory?
NO. It does not provide a systematic
matrix of theoretical statements that allow
useful predictions in a wide range of
cases.
 Is it Good Science?
NO. It’s main arguments do not establish
their claims.
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Lesson 2
ID should be refuted as Scientific
Discourse, using the facts and argument.
 It should not be dismissed as non-science.
This has the appearance of a institutional
power play, and invites response in kind.
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Key Arguments:
Life cannot be the result of random physical forces.
Evolution is random.
Specified Complexity (Dembski).
 Irreducible Complexity (Behe)
 Darwin’s Black Box: Newly discovered biochemical complexity.
 The Origin of Life.
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Lesson 3
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Understand how Evolution Works.
Evolution is NOT Random
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Systems involving
1. Inheritance
2. Variation
3. Differential Survival (Selection)
function as algorithms that naturally act in very nonrandom ways, tending inexorably towards higher fitness.
Evolution agrees that complex objects could not have
arisen randomly.
The source of variation is normally thought to be random,
or undirected, mutations, but this is not the essential
feature of Evolution.
Not all natural activity that is undirected or non-intelligent
is random. Undirected≠Random.
Adaptive Landscapes
and Evolutionary Algorithms
The Argument from Probability
Complex objects have
1. Many Parts, with many, many possible
combinations.
2. One of which, specifiable in advance, is
the right or functional one.
 It is vastly improbable, then, that complex
objects arise from a random combination
from their parts.
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Specified Complexity
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An event exhibits specified complexity if it
is contingent and therefore not necessary;
if it is complex and therefore not readily
repeatable by chance; and if it is specified
in the sense of exhibiting an
independently given pattern." (p. 4)
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(Dembski, William A. (2003). ”Gauging Intelligent
Design?”
Equivalent to Dawkins definition of
complex.
Complex
Not Complex
Irreducible Complexity
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Irreducible Complexity (Behe):
By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of
several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to
the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the
parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An
irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly
(that is, by continuously improving the initial function,
which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight,
successive modifications of a precursor system, because
any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is
missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly
complex biological system, if there is such a thing, would
be a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. (p. 39)
E. Coli Flagellum
Darwin’s Black Box
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: Newly discovered bio-chemical
complexity. Explanations of the evolution
of gross anatomical features leave out
explanations of the even more complex
microscopic mechanisms that lie hidden
within them.
Blood Coagulation Cascade (Behe)
The Evolution of the Eye
Our Intuitions are Bad Judges
Given the lengths of time and the
probabilities involved, our intuitions
mislead us about what is or is not
possible.
 We would not say it was impossible to fit
all of the information in the bible into a
square centimeter, even though we cannot
imagine it.
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100 to 99
80% in 1000 generations
100 to 95
80% in 200, 98% in 1000 generations
(Mark Ridley, Evolution, p. 95)
Self-Organization
.5
.48
Self-Organization
.6
1.2
Self-Organization
Various Ratios near .6
Self-Organization
Benard Convection Patterns
The Eye Without Intelligence
Lesson 3
Genes evolve, not gross anatomical
structures. We should ask how the genes
that give rise to complex structures can
evolve, not the parts of the structures
themselves.
 Mechanical processes with no intelligence
give rise to complex structures in
development.
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The Problem of the Origin of Life
Since the conditions that allow natural
selection require Self-Replicating
molecules, Natural Selection cannot
explain the origin of these molecules.
 Fred Hoyle compared the probability of a
protein forming randomly from amino
acids to the chances of a tornado
assembling the parts of a 747 passing
through a junkyard.
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Time Scale of Life’s Evolution
Time Scale of Life’s Evolution
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If the age of the earth (4.6 billion years) were
condensed into one year ...
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Jan. 1 -- Earth was born
Early Feb. -- Oldest known rocks formed
Late Mar. -- First primitive life formed
Mid Nov.-- First complex life with shells or
skeletons formed
Late Nov. -- First land animals
Dec. 25 -- Extinction of the dinosaurs
Dec. 31 -- Humans evolved in the evening
Dec. 31 -- one second before midnight,
humans first set foot on the Moon
 From Davidson et al., 2002
The Vicious Circle
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DNA requires a number of complex
enzymes to replicate and to maintain its
integrity. But these enzymes, being
complex, could not have evolved without
natural selection and some system of
replication.
DNA Replication
(The Way Life Works, M. Hoagland, Bert Dodson)
Lesson 4
Be careful what you ask for.
 The type of design envisioned by ID is not
intelligent.
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What is Design?
Design directly manipulates and uses the
natural properties of objects to serve a
novel purpose.
 No manipulation, no design. Throwing a
log on the fire or bringing into existence a
pre-existing form is not design.
 No direct manipulation, no design. The
manager who puts the engineers together
on a project is not the designer.
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Problems with Design Envisioned by ID
Must have occurred at many different
times during the history of life.
 Requires the direct intervention into
naturally evolving system.
 Requires design of genes not structures.
 Can be altered by subsequent evolution.
 Frequent intervention in natural processes
is incompatible with omniscient,
omnipotent designer.
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2 Designs
One works without intelligent intervention
based only on the natural properties of the
mechanism.
 The other cannot perform its function
through its natural properties alone, and
requires the intervention of intelligence.
 Which is the better design?
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Lessons for the Scientist:
Being Smart about Intelligent Design
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ID should be refuted as Scientific Discourse, using the facts and
argument.
It should not be dismissed as non-science. This has the
appearance of a institutional power play, and invites response in
kind.
Scientists should be state clearly the scientific consensus about
what we know and don’t know about the history of life. They
should be clear both about what ID concedes and about what
problems evolutionary theory faces and their best probable
solutions.
Scientists should be smart (and not glib) about the problems
posed for human value and meaning by a world devoid of purpose
and plan. The problems of the meaning of Life are no more trivial
than those of the meaning of (biological) life.
Lessons for the Religious Person:
Being Smart about Intelligent Design
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Be clear about how natural selection works as well as the
different meanings of random and purposive.
Don’t trust your intuitions about what natural selection can
and can’t do.
Don’t put too much hope in a set of speculations that may
be empirically disproved.
In attempting to gain the authority that comes with
scientific method, do not forget the underlying differences
between what the methods of science and religion reveal
about the world. If you want to attack mechanism, you
can’t do it through science.
Be Clear about what kind of design you are envisioning and
whether it is appropriate to the God you believe in.